Lawrence O’Donnell Burns Donald Trump On Flake And His ‘Great’ Memory

The adage “if he’s talking, he’s lying” has been hurled at Republican Donald Trump for justifiable reasons. The number of false statements made by the president during his brief tenure topped 1,300 at the beginning of this month, according to the Washington Post.

So, it should be no surprise that, when Trump stopped for a brief interaction with reporters yesterday, another whopper was let loose. This time, the Republican told a lie trying to denounce his fellow GOPer, Senator Jeff Flake. And MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell pounced rather hard on the falsehood.

O’Donnell began by addressing Trump’s bragging about his Ivy League alma mater that disowns him and his description of his infamously bungled phone call with the wife of Sgt. La David Johnson. While the president was claiming he handled it perfectly, he mixed in this gem (full video below):

Then O’Donnell got to the verifiable lie Trump told about Flake. Trump claimed:

He wrote a book about me before I ever met him, before I ever heard his name…He came out with this horrible book and I said “Who is this guy?”

The host wasted no time busting this.

That is a lie. Jeff Flake’s book “Conscience of a Conservative” came out seven months into the Trump presidency. Came out this summer. 2017…Donald Trump met Jeff Flake a year before Jeff Flake’s book came out.

Trump’s most tense exchange was with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has been vocal in his concerns about the business mogul’s candidacy, especially his rhetoric and policies on immigration that the senator argues alienate many Latino voters and others in Arizona.

When Flake stood up and introduced himself, Trump told him, “You’ve been very critical of me.”

“Yes, I’m the other senator from Arizona — the one who didn’t get captured — and I want to talk to you about statements like that,” Flake responded, according to two Republican officials.

In other words, not only did Trump know Flake, he was aware of his criticism before that meeting.

But it has to be done. And we have to stay vigilant, even when Donald Trump tells seemingly innocuous lies such as this one. If we ever stop, he likely just get even worse than he already is, as hard as that may be to imagine.